Business Essentials Package

What is Business Essentials?

Our most popular package is FSB Business Essentials which includes a whole range of benefits and products designed to make your business fly

What's included?

A suite of legal benefits including a dedicated helpline, bundled insurance products and a range of online information to keep your business safe. Plus a whole range of negotiated benefits to help save you money and win business.

Chris Green's Story

'Within a few weeks of joining we'd taken advantage of FSB’s Online Legal Documents. We started a graduate programme and access to these documents gave us an understanding of the legal side, and has helped us to create a number of processes and procedures.'

Marc Wileman's Story

'When we first took on a member of staff, we used the online legal document template library. FSB does more important stuff than you think it does, there are lots of member benefits, probably more than we actually use.'

How much does FSB membership cost?

We offer three packages to suit your business needs. Joining FSB Connect is free, our Business Essentials package starts at £172.50 in the first year and our specialist Business Creation package has an introductory price of £99 in the first year.

Opening

The National Chairman opened Conference on Friday by welcoming delegates both in the venue and watching from afar. Sir Peter Soulsby, City Mayor for Leicester, said the City had a rich and diverse culture that lended itself to small business. Nigel Eaton, Vice President Head of SME from Visa started a "flow-ometer" to calculate how many visa transactions there would be with FSB Europe over the duration of the conference. It reached over 17,000 in the first 20 seconds!

FSB evidence prompted the Government to launch an investigation, along with the FSA, into interest rate swap agreements, and now the 40,000 people estimated to be affected are able to claim refunds and banks had to set aside £2 billion for compensation. To conclude the National Chairman spoke about the successes that the FSB had had influencing the budget and raised those areas that still needed to be addressed including business rates, large businesses settling invoices with small businesses in a timely manner and access to finance.

In Conversation with the Business Secretary

Delegates warmly welcomed The Secretary of State to the stage for what was an open and honest summary of the state of the British economy. He spoke of the importance of the budget content in terms of housing, National Insurance and petrol costs and expressed how the Government had "done something" to assist business given the current restraints. He described the FSB as an "effective group" that targeted issues facing small businesses and spoke at some length about the mis-selling of Interest Rate Swap Agreements (IRSA), and how they had done "great harm" particularly to small businesses. The economy was showing little growth and in 2008 suffered a "heart attack" with the collapse of banks and damage to Government revenue, this held back growth. The Secretary of State talked about export markets and how this was an area of growth, particularly in China, India and Russia, but that there remained access to finance issues for some British companies to tap this potential.

Justin Urquhart-Stewart

Justin Urquhart-Stewart delivered a fast paced, lively, informative and hilarious account of the state of the global economy opening his speech with one word; "confidence". He described the media as driven by a need to sell newspapers and finding ‘that negative headline', he told the audience how it was the role of all business people to tell the good stories and that there was no need to panic - the global economy was in fact doing quite well despite the largest "financial explosion" in living memory. His message was clear: confidence would drive this success. On how Government can support economic growth, Justin shared his thoughts on fixing the banking system, supporting innovative ideas like crowdfunding and other localised funding where local knowledge and opportunity could be properly developed, and said that the Government spent too much time "tinkering around the edges" and not enough time looking at the "big picture". The economy is "damaged not doomed" he said.

Peter McAvoy

Peter stated that during his eight years with Google he had seen the challenges that small businesses face and had enjoyed helping them grow and to bring in new business. Peter asked, how can small businesses deal with a shift in communication culture? The answer seemed to be to look at what the consumer wants and how you currently operate. Do they match up? If not, what steps can a small business owner take to make them run closer together? With mobile usage integral to everyday lives and six in 10 people feeling compelled to use their mobile device at least once an hour there are many opportunities for small businesses owners to adapt and adjust to this moving market. Peter’s key points included: find out how your customers want to engage with their mobile, your number one priority should be to build a mobile website. Concluding, Peter said that small businesses owners should go and think about what they would change because in 2013 people can't go without their mobile phones and that experience needs to be built into your customer's experience of your business.

The Rt Hon Owen Paterson MP, North Shropshire MP and Secretary of State for Environment Food and Rural Affairs

Mr Paterson was preceded by a DEFRA video outlining the benefits the internet and broadband has brought to a variety of small businesses. With 50% of FSB Members owning rural businesses, measures on cutting rural red tape, supporting rural food and drink, and the funding available to rural SME's was of great interest to the audience. Poor mobile coverage alongside broadband was acknowledged by Mr Paterson as a real issue for rural SME's, which he had taken on board from the FSB's ‘Missing Links' publication. FSB's budget ‘win' with the cancellation of the proposed 3p fuel rise was highlighted, but Mr Paterson acknowledged that rural transport policy still had some way to go to meet the needs of the roughly 85% of FSB members reliant on their vehicle. Mr Paterson noted the value the FSB's Keep Trade Local campaign, re-launched at National Conference, could offer to championing British products, and stimulating towns in rural Britain.

Chuka Umunna MP

Chuka Umunna MP for Streatham and Shadow Business Secretary stressed that we must start to get the economy moving again. Demand was weak – not for every business, but for far too many. He also stressed that there was little to stimulate high street spend. He referred to Labour's Small Business Taskforce – a report for business people by business. The report was bursting with 100 practical ideas such as: Access to finance - more competition, peer to peer lending and diversity in the small business lending market; Cash flow - too many small businesses are effectively bankrolling bigger businesses that refuse to pay them on time; Skills - the lack of technical and engineering skills, as well the need for young people to have the right attitude for work and to be "job ready" are crucial; Better infrastructure - from access to superfast broadband to a fair deal in the energy markets; Energy - small businesses consume like residential consumers but small firms get nowhere near the same protection; Regulation – sensible measures to reduce the burden of regulation needed; Exports - huge amount of demand out there in the global economy, which is set to double through emerging markets; Small Business Saturday UK: Chuka announced that a UK Small Business Saturday – to celebrate and showcase small businesses contribute to their local economies and to encourage people to shop at small independent businesses in their local area – would start on Saturday 7 December 2013.

Policy Session

FSB Policy Chairman, Mike Cherry, hosted a policy session to close day one of the conference, welcoming the Business Minister Michael Fallon MP and Toby Perkins, Shadow Business Minister, to the stage, followed by an audience with three Policy Vice Chairmen. Issues raised by delegates and debated focused on the function of Local Enterprise Partnerships, small business finance and banks, business productivity, infrastructure and business support. Other issues discussed were education and skills, employment legislation, the role of HM Revenue & Customs and tax in general. Exporting and energy also featured prominently in the session, which was followed by a workshop for business owners involving three policy portfolio chairs.

Ministerial Surgeries

Toby Perkins, MP for Chesterfield took questions on issues from airports to the A14 at an FSB surgery session in Leicester. Mr Perkins was quizzed on LEP' and how SME's can get the input they need to LEP's as well as better communication channels between the two, no airport in Sheffield, and how many small businesses need educating in how to boost their productivity through marketing and staff training.

A business surgery was held in four sessions with Michael Fallon, Minister of State for Business and Enterprise, Department for Business Innovation and Skills. Mr Fallon was also asked about Sheffield Airport, how Government can help facilitate the important link between education and business enterprise, employment and small firms, reviewing some of the employment legislation for companies with fewer than five employees to encourage business growth in the UK, how UKTI can help FSB Members more and also about the work of the LEPs.

FSB Question Time

At the Question Time session, which was chaired by Naga Munchetty. Members put a range of questions to panellists John Ashworth, Labour MP for Leicester South, the FSB's Policy Chairman Mike Cherry, the Leicester Mercury's Business Editor, Ian Griffin, and Nicky Morgan, Conservative MP for Loughborough. The session began with a debate on the housing market. Questions then moved on to finance – including the lack of support from banks for the construction sector. The funding for lending scheme and other Government finance initiatives came under scrutiny and Tax was also hotly debated. Exporting came next, particularly what the Government could do to support small firms seeking to export to non-European destinations such as BRIC countries. It was felt that UKTI has improved recently but could still provide more support. Following a discussion about the role and funding of Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), with many members concerned about the lack of genuine small business representation and inconsistency, the session ended with questions on energy, including the balance between traditional and renewable, green energy provision. Mr Cherry called for cross-party support for long-term energy provision without delay.

Presentation by Visa

Safety, convenience and control in an era of fast-changing payments was the theme of a presentation from Nigel Eaton, Head of Small Business Solutions at Visa Europe, the main sponsor of FSB's 2013 annual conference. Discussing technology and the future of payments, Mr Eaton highlighted new Visa products set to change the way payments are received and processed. They are: Contactless Payments, V.ME, Visa Alerts and Mobile POS (Point of Sale) terminals. Revealing a transaction flow that showed over 63 million Visa card transactions had taken place in the duration of the conference, Mr Eaton emphasised the importance to all of these systems of safety and security, in addition to convenience and control. Contactless Payments allows transactions to be made without having to insert cards into terminals, allowing quick payments in seconds, with pin requirements for transactions of over £20. The past year has seen a five-fold increase in the use of this technology and Mr Evans said it would be a foundation stone of the direction of payments in the future – including imbedding Contactless Payment into mobile phones.

Toyah Willcox, singer, actress and author

Toyah spoke passionately about her experiences in show business from a woman's perspective. She focussed on the need to constantly adapt her image to maintain longevity and success. Toyah described herself as a small cottage industry. She spoke about the changes in show business during an eventful thirty five year career. In particular, Toyah believes that the power of social media such as twitter and YouTube, has allowed her to cultivate numerous images for significantly less money than would have been the case many years ago and that this power should be harnessed by micro firms. Small businesses should take advantage of modern forms of technology to develop a unique image to make them stand out from the crowd. Toyah said that ‘twitter should be your oxygen' providing opportunities for visibility and profile building. Toyah stressed the importance of constructing a unique image for building a successful career and business. She spoke about how she has used the element of surprise to maintain her profile and the need to continue learning, developing and growing as an individual. Toyah emphasised the need to have belief in yourself and your business. She ended by reiterating the importance and need to constantly re define herself and that businesses are no different – she has had to adapt, as an actor and singer – to changes every decade, but that this adaptability is the key to her success